Emily_R

Thanks to all who suggested a stick blender in a mason jar. Did this tonight to make a little parsley lime sauce for serving with salmon, and it worked really well (and thats even given my really ancient plastic stick blender from the Salvation Army). Was able to puree what when blended amounted to no more than 1/2 a cup, maybe more like a 1/3rd of a cup... And no splatter!

Hi all! So tonight there was a graduate-student iron chef competition that me and a friend entered... The theme ingredient was lime, and you could make anything you wanted on that theme. So I present to you... Ginger-lime shrimp cakes, with a avocado, mango, and grapefruit salad. Served with a guajillo chile sauce and a cilantro-lime crema, and topped with a fried lime supreme. We didn't win (and god knows our plating isn't good - the crema was too thin and spilled all over the plate, and our composition was off for a plate so small)... But hot damn did the food taste good! Here's a link to the recipe for the shrimp cakes -- I replaced the lemon zest with lots of lime zest. Seriously, these things are so good its ridiculous. I've made them in all sizes, from tiny one-bite sizes to almost burger sized. Also amazing is the fact that they re-heat super well -- still moist and delicious. And last thing I'd add is that everything on this plate tasted better with that guajillo chile sauce. Just Guajillos, toasted and rehydrated in boiling water, then blended with some of the water, lime juice, honey, and a pinch of salt. YUM. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/recipex/msg0305233028834.html (scroll down for shrimp cake recipe)

I think taste the difference depends on what its in. I believe that Cooks Illustrated did a taste test a while back, where tasters couldn't tell the difference between high-end, low-end, and imitation extracts when they were in baked goods. I'd imagine that in something like a panna cotta you might be able to, but I think their broader point was that when tasting blind, discerning differences was much harder than people would expect.

Agreed -- recipe please Pierogi! That looks incredible!

I also use the shaking method for emulsifying dressings, but what I'm really looking for is something that will blend small quantities -- like pureeing a shallot or fresh herbs or anchovies into a small quantity of sauce. Will be trying the stick blender soon!

Thanks for the replies everyone! I will definitely try the mason jar trick -- we'll see if it works with my old 5-dollars-at-Salvation-Army stick blender... And I've been tempted by those 3 cup food processors, so its good to hear that people find them useful...

Paul -- I am drooling over that Braciole! Dinner here was salad, but good... Arugula, tomato, hardboiled egg, avocado, and feta, with a lemon anchovy dressing. I licked the plate...

I was wondering if anyone has advice on what to use for blending / emulsifying small quantities -- particularly salad dressings. There's only two of us in our household, so I don't generally want to make a big vat of dressing. But if I want to do something like puree cilantro into a dressing, it seems like I need to use the blender, which really doesn't work well with less than a cup of ingredients (my FP is an 11 cup, and needs even bigger quantities than that). Does anyone have a tool they would recommend? I have an (old) stick blender, but I don't see how I wouldn't have stuff flying out of the open container if I tried using it...

Thanks everyone -- and Andie -- that is one clever solution! Now of course, if the mandate is to use the salt pork soon, the question is -- what do I use it for? Suggestions?

Hmmm. No, not curing any more -- I rinsed it off and then coated it with regular salt, like the book said...

Hi all -- I made my own salt pork, using the recipe from Ruhlman's Charcuterie. Now it is sitting in the fridge in a little container, and it is kind of weeping liquid -- it is sitting in a little pool of its own exuded juices. Is this normal? i've never bought salt pork in the store before (this was something I did with the trimmings from my pork belly that was made into pancetta), so I have no idea what it is supposed to look/taste/behave like... Thanks! Emily

Don -- for what is worth, I had the same experience with the pancetta (same recipe, from Ruhlman) being very salty. More salty than I'd have liked, and I'm someone who loooooooves salt. I thought I rinsed it off enough, but my guess is that wasn't the issue, since the salt must have been absorbed into the meat. Does anyone know if it is possible to cut back on the salt in the recipe, so long as the amount of pink salt remains the same?

I have a presto canner / cooker, that I use for canning salsa and applesauce. If I'm not mistaken, it has an aluminum interior? I personally wouldn't use mine for cooking, as I find the aluminum picks up weird off smells in the canning process, that I wouldn't want to transfer to food I cooked. Not to mention I'd be concerned with cooking anything acidic (with tomatoes) in there... Emily

Dcarch -- that crackling pork skin looks so good I can hardly stand it! How did you make it? Is it deep fried?

Had another huge hit last night! As the NY Times Calls it, "Spicy, Garlicky, Cashew Chicken." Chicken in a cashew, cilantro, jalapeno and lime pesto, baked until the nuts in the pesto turn it into a browned crust for the chicken. With extra sauce reserved to mix in with white rice. SO GOOD. Made it for guests who went crazy for it. Note that a) the recipe doesn't specify keeping sauce aside for serving with the chicken, but that is a must. It was difficult not to just eat it all straight with a spoon. I used about half of the sauce on the chicken (and I used 2lbs boneless/skinless thighs rather than 3lbs regular), and saved the rest. Also, I baked rather than grilled. That allowed the sauce to stay on the chicken and make a crust. I baked at 400 degrees, and then broiled for a minute or so at the end to get the topping a little browner. Would be killer on pork tenderloin as well. Here's the link to the recipe... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/dining/111arex.html And here's the link to the blog where I originally saw it (so you can see a photo) -- a really fun blog that has essentially never steered me wrong with recipes... http://thursdaynightsmackdown.com/2011/03/31/spicy-garlicky-cashew-chicken/comment-page-1/#comment-17179 Anyone else have any recipes that rock lately? Emily

Oh Patrick -- what I'd give to have tried some of that curry! It was a good dinner tonight. I stopped at the supermarket on the way home, and there were two 1.5 inch thick veal chops on last-day-to-use-them sale. I seared them up, roasted them, and then deglazed the pan and made a mushroom and marsala cream sauce... Served with parmesan couscous and the whole meal was heaven.

I do remember the first healthfood store I ever visited. It was on 14th street near 9th avenue in NYC, and this would have been back in the early/mid 1980's. Honestly, my main memory is.... CAROB!

Thanks for bumping this thread up -- it inspired me to try it tonight. Made it with 90 grams of Callebaut 60%, which I figured was around 1/3rd fat content, so 30 grams of fat. I added another 90 grams of liquid to that -- almost all water, with one tablespoon of grand marnier. Worked like a charm -- whipped into basically the consistency of thicker whipped cream (not quite as airy a mousse as the photos posted by others here, but still a pretty great consistency. Super super rich though. Very cool trick!

I have a similar problem every summer -- we have a huge garden, and literally have an oregano patch that is probably 3 feet wide by 4 feet long! My solution is a Mediterranean-ish dish of slow-cooked (stewed) greenbeans. Basically -- good olive oil, lots of greenbeans, lots of sliced onions, garlic, a bunch of lemon juice, some white wine, and then a colossal amount of fresh herbs -- oregano, parsley, dill -- whatever I have on hand. I'll often use at least one if not two cups of chopped herbs. And of course salt and lots of fresh ground pepper. Let this stew at low heat. Lately I've been adding a bit of harissa for kick, and then when the beans are done (meltingly soft), I'll lay a few pieces of tilapia on top and steam them over the beans. Serious yum. I generally use frozen greenbeans from my garden, but it works with fresh too of course. Looking forward to hearing other responses to this post, as my husband was just hacking back at last year's oregano today!

I make a ton of fruit roll ups every year, but have never done it the way Norm does, food-processing the apples. Typically I will make some very thick applesauce as the base, and then other fruits get cooked in with that. So I'll make a huge pot of applesauce and add in (usually frozen) peaches, or strawberries, or (my favorite) concord grapes towards the end, when the apples are mostly cooked. I then run the whole mess -- apples and other fruit -- through a food mill to get seeds/cores/peels/ out, add some corn syrup which helps keep them flexible, and spread very thickly on the dehydrator trays. I always use applesauce as a base. I find that straight fruit puree of other fruits (like strawberries, eg.) is very sharp tasting and acidic once dehydrated, not to mention not having as much body as I like to get the puree good and thick on the dehydrator sheets.

I was really routing for Antonia, but think she made a tactical mistake in her last supper meal. There's no way you're going to produce an authentic Japanese meal like Morimoto's mother would have made. I was hoping she would somehow try to essentially use his childhood dishes as an inspiration rather than as a template. I mean, there are soups you can use miso in that aren't the traditional Japanese miso soup. And there are ways to do sticky rice that aren't straight sushi rice. I'm not saying it would have been easy -- Mike had a much easier meal to make modifications to. But both Mike and Blais added their own personalities to those dishes, while Antonia played it very straight. Playing it straight might have been fine if she was cooking for someone whose last meal was Italian. But given what she was faced with, I think her only chance to win that challenge was to go pretty far afield from Japanese home cooking.

Ok, while I am the world's worst dinner photographer, had to post about this one. Just cut into the pancetta I made for the first time! I decided to use it in a mushroom pancetta cream sauce over pasta, with some Madeira wine cooked down with the mushrooms. Really rich and really good!

Hey Raoul -- My guess, given my recent experience, is that more humidity is probably better than less... I think my basement may have been a little dry, and so the meat part of the pancetta got a little harder than I would have liked. That said, I cut into it today, after 10 days hanging, and was generally pleased. Its a little saltier than I'd like -- I don't know if maybe I didn't wash it for long enough before hanging... But still very very savory! Apologies for the crappy photography... Emily

Dinner was more fun with the new pressure cooker. Made a Spanish-style Arroz con Pollo, with chorizo and saffron... Really tasty and amazingly quick -- 3 minutes cooking, 6 minutes cooling, plus maybe another 5 minutes to come up to pressure. Next time I'll add more chicken fat, as I like a really rich mouth-feel for the rice... My god I love Chorizo though...

Hey All -- Ok, so another pancetta question. My pancetta has been hanging for 8 days now. It is clearly firming up, and smells good. I have it wrapped in one or two layers of cheesecloth, since our basement is dusty. Here's my question -- the meat side of it is starting to feel a little dry / crusty. The fat side feels more pliable. Is this normal? What is the texture / dryness I am aiming for? My basement is the right temperature (50-60 degrees), and I believe at roughly the right humidity level -- the humidity is certainly no less than 40% down there. Thanks! Emily